How To Maintain Your Swimming Fitness During The Summer

Monday, 14 August 2017 09:19:04 Europe/London

How To Maintain Your Swimming Fitness During The Summer

Summer is often painted as the perfect time for swimming training. It’s certainly not considered the “off-season” the way that the cold of winter is! But making sure you get all your training in for the new race season in autumn isn’t always as simple as people make out.

Here are some essential tips to making sure you get the training you need throughout the summer.

Keep Things Fun

Hitting the swimming pool and doing a few laps is, of course, one of the most efficient ways of getting the training you need. In fact, unless you like freezing yourself half to death in the sea, it’s basically your only option throughout the colder months! While this doesn’t usually stop swimmers, it’s true that many people need a bit of variety in their training regime in order to stay as motivated as possible.

Thankfully, summer is the perfect season for open water swimming. Public pools are heated throughout the year, but the open water is left to the mercy of the natural elements - it’s not exactly great for winter-time dips! Summer leaves the water at an amazing temperature, so take advantage of this in order to add some variety to your training routine.

Train While Travelling

Summer is when most people will be travelling to places for their holidays. Holidaying is often given as an excuse to not workout or swim, simply because it’s not usually all that feasible to do so. But as long as you’re properly prepared, you can definitely get in the swim training that you need.

Of course, holidaying in the summer usually means a lot of swimming anyway! But if you want to ensure that you’re actually training and not just going for the leisurely dips that everyone else is focused on, then you should ensure you bring the right accessories with you. Bring your swimsuit, your goggles, and the all-important swim cap. Thankfully, these things are easy to pack into a suitcase! Make sure to bring waterproof protection from the sun, as a lot of the swimming you’ll do will probably take place outside, exposed to the crisp summer sun. Some outdoor goggles would be a great help here too, perhaps some polarised or even tinted goggles can make all the difference when swimming outdoors. Take a look at our goggle guide for more tips on what to buy!

Train Earlier

One of the biggest problems with summer? Well, everyone heads to the swimming pool! Public pools, as well as open water lakes, become much more populated in the summer as everyone dips into the water to cool off their bodies. But this creates a problem for you, of course. With all of those people in the water, it becomes much harder for you to find the space you need in order to train effectively! We don’t want to come off as misanthropic, but… well, it gets a little irritating having all those people around!

So getting the amount of training you need will require you to get that time in during off-peak hours. You’ve got a couple of options here; going really early or quite late. Late can be a problem because intensive training too close to bedtime can disturb the quality of your sleep. So when summer hits, it’s time to get up early and hit the water before everyone else does!

Try Out Something New

Perhaps you don't have access to a pool while you're on holiday, there are still plenty of other options available to you, pack some dryland cords to work on some resistance training, and even go out for a run every morning, not only to keep fit, but it's a great way to check out where you're staying. (make sure you plan your routes to avoid getting lost)

Other options including taking a pushbike with you, cycling is an excellent cardiovascular and lower body workout, lots of popular holiday destinations will have cycling routes/paths and occasionally bikes available to rent. Another option would be just simply going out for a long walk or hike, there's no better way to see your surroundings than a great adventure on foot, it's surprising how much of a workout you can get from long day trips on foot.

Over on our Pinterest we have shared a great range of workouts all aimed to be completed without any equipment, just some open space!

So there you have it, some top tips on how to maintain your fitness throughout the summer. For more information on how to work on your swimming outside of the pool, check out our previous blog here.